What are people talking about when they talk about ‘the deep state’?

The term was coined by Professor Peter Dale Scott of the University of California. With the help of DarkJournalist Daniel Liszt, Scott explains.

You don’t have to agree with all that Scott says (I don’t) to recognize the validity of his concept of the deep state, a largely unaccountable nexus of power that functions independently of the elected government.

57 comments

David,Thank you for the lead to this article; Anatomy of the Deep Stateby Michael S. Lofgren

A prescient quotation from it:

“Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude.”\\][//

Peter Dale Scott mentions a remark by FDR that there has been a group above the perceived government since the time of Jackson. What he is talking about here is Jackson’s war against the Central Bankers. Jackson eventually won that battle and crushed the Central Bank.Of course the bankers and the corporations that grew up around it (as Thomas Jefferson phrased the situation earlier) did not simply go away.They planned attempted come-backs from that time forward and eventually were successful in getting Woodrow Wilson elected as a puppet for their agenda. It is of course during the Wood/House administration that the Creature from Jyckle Island was spawned, and the so-called Federal Reserve was established as a private banking syndicate that has ruled the nation through the Ponzi scheme by means of usury.

Under Wilson, who was elected on promises to keep the US out of the war in Europe, turned around and joined that war, the first fully industrialized war, and the first global conflict. This was hailed as “The War to End War” and a war that would make the world “Safe for Democracy”. These phrases were developed by the budding Public Relations Regime, which had involvement of Edward Bernays (who coined the term ‘public relations’) and Walter Lippmann, another pioneer of technocratic psychological propaganda.

This is the historical backdrop that Professor Scott speaks to in his introductory remarks in this video. And the central banking cabal is the top, 4th tier of the hierarchy that he began to touch upon there; the very top of the pyramid of financial/political power.\\][//

But let’s not forget that before we set up a central bank there were many more bank failures where innocent people lost all of their money. Further, without a federal income tax and a Federal Reserve, I doubt that FDR would have had any tools with which to combat the Great Depression, which came about because of free for all, unregulated stock fraud, and a concentration of wealth at the top which grew during the twenties to an unhealthy degree that we are seeing all over again today. I suggest John Maynard Keynes’ solutions and not robber baron, unregulated capitalism, is the way to go. Andrew Jackson, for all his populist leanings, was more than willing to use federal troops to herd the Cherokee and other Indians into his terrible death march to what became Oklahoma Territory. Let’s put our American “heroes” into perspective. FDR has his horrible flaws too (Japanese internment comes to mind, among other things). I prefer to look at systems rather than individual leaders. All leaders have flaws, including JFK.

Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve, periodic bank failures often happened because all of the small, unaligned independent banks could not muster sufficient reserves in times of crisis. Runs on these banks where small holders lost all of their savings undermined the public’s faith in the banking and monetary system. Not only that, but large infrastructure projects could never have been built (unless Uncle Sam went hat-in-hand to beg a few ruthless industrialists for help). Kennedy knew how ruthless these industrialists could be when he had to face off against some of them in 1962 during the US Steel confrontation. FDR improved upon the creation of the Fed with more reforms, including the FDIC laws to safeguard small holder’s savings.

Here’s the kicker: If you want a banana republic, where the government is small and corrupt and controlled by private corporations, you want a weak federal government. If you want totalitarian government, you take away all independent capitalist opportunity. If you want a mixed system (which the USA has strayed from since Reagan’s stripping of federal government power) you balance free capital with federal government power to oversee and referee the system. The trick is to ensure that there is fairness and that the system doesn’t become corrupt. Read Thomas Piketty for a better understanding of what I’m talking about. James Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes will give you some historical context as well.

Dismissing the propaganda provided by the privately owned Federal Reserve itself, I will speak to this last part, where you say:

“Here’s the kicker: If you want a banana republic, where the government is small and corrupt and controlled by private corporations.

It seems the point you miss here is that these corporations are given their “person-hood” by statutes instituted by the State.

These “banana republics” are controlled by these ruthless corporations no more than the US. It has been more subtle here in the US because of the sophisticated Public Relations Regime.

The bottom line of the situation with the FED is that they loan money to the US Government at interest. You must certainly be aware how that national debt has grown exponentially sense just 2008. The numbers are astronomical, even the conservative ones. Independent financial commentators will point to even higher numbers, but both sources are talking about at least dozens of TRILLIONS of dollars. So much debt that it would take hundreds of years to pay it off, it no other expenditures were made for any other purpose.

The scam here is of course that it is all done by the voodoo magic of ‘accounting’, it is all nothing more than a grimoire of fiction.\\][//

“It seems the point you miss here is that these corporations are given their “person-hood” by statutes instituted by the State.”

Nope. I read the 1886 statute (Santa Clara Co.) which established this dumb precedent. I think we need to undo it. But I don’t think dismantling the federal government is a solution. Reform the system yes. I’m with the muckrakers of the progressive era, who wanted federal government oversight of food (Pure Food and Drug Act) and who wanted infrastructure power with a strong federal system, not a rag tag, Jeffersonian system which was fraught with slavery to make it work. More along the lines of the Scandinavian countries, with socialized medicine and a well developed welfare state, democratically elected. That’s a much better system than a frontier Ayn Radian feudalistic one. And yes, we agree that the banks need to be held accountable. Instead of “too big to fail” we should be saying “not too big to jail”. But if you carrying pictures of Chairman Mao….you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.

“Nope. I read the 1886 statute (Santa Clara Co.) which established this dumb precedent.”~Sam

I have read the Santa Clara ruling. It does not establish the precedent, the Judge makes clear by a off hand phrase, (orbiter dicta) that this concept of ‘corporate personhood’ is already accepted by the judiciary.

Go deeper and read how the recording was made by the in the register by the court’s assistant, who had immediate and deep ties to the RR corporations, who framed the ruling with the application of this orbiter dicta, when in fact the issue before the court was one of zoning/tax issue disputes between Santa Clara County and Southern Pacific Railroad.

The decision infamously implied that equal protection laws provided by the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations, but the opinion did not explicitly state this.\\][//

Socialized, not “socialist”. The VPK (Communist Party in Sweden) would strongly disagree that the center party and Moderaterna is “socialist”. In Norway, Denmark and Sweden you have private enterprise, which is taxed much more than in the USA, but is still privately owned. That’s NOT socialism. Karl Marx did not believe in privately owned business. He thought it should all be run by the state. The Nordic countries don’t do that. Socialized, yes. Socialism, no.

In the theoretical work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, socialization has a slightly different meaning, where it refers to the transformation of an economic activity from a solitary to a social relationship. Socialization is a process that begins to take place under capitalism and is a hallmark of the capitalist mode of production in the form of socialization of production by transforming the process of producing goods and services into a highly collective and mechanized process. This occurs due to centralization of capital in industries where there are increasing returns to scale. In Marxist theory, a contradiction develops between the socialized production and the private ownership and appropriation of the surplus value and profits, leading to a situation where the expansion of socialization to include surplus value in the form of cooperative ownership over the means of production. This expansion of socialization marks the transition from capitalism to socialism.\\][//

Or not. The Scandinavian countries are free market capitalist economies with democratically elected governments and strong traditions of free speech and civil liberties. They also have effective social welfare programs funded by government. Basically, this means the populace is willing to spend money on programs that benefit the disadvantaged and thereby the whole of society. They are not transitioning to communism in any way, shape or form.

Marx’s theory is one thing. It does not necessarily translate into the real world – just ask the USSR.

“Marx’s theory is one thing. It does not necessarily translate into the real world..” ~Vanessa

Yes it does, it is translating into the real world before your eyes as a phase of the transition in the Scandinavian countries you keep pointing to. It is has transition here in the US in full bloom as a corporatist socialist system, ie; fascist.

You and Sam have already reached stage one in this process towards a socialist state. As you have already surrendered the principles of personal liberty; as this process continues you will obviously go with the flow, accepting the ever dwindling bounty the state affords you.

I already consider the US a socialist state, a corporatist, ie, fascist state. Here the bounty proffered by the state has has become so pitiful that there is growing homelessness, hunger, and an exponentially blooming prison population, both state run and corporation run institutions.

You surely can see this now, yet you still believe the poison that weakened society is needed in larger doses to finally realize health!\\][//

Hi Willy, you are so brainwashed you don’t even know you are brainwashed. The terms ‘socialist’ and ‘socialism’ are routinely used in the USA to inspire a knee-jerk reaction of horror against other wealthy capitalist countries which have decent safety nets for the poor. Just so Americans won’t even think of going there.

Do you realise your cult of individualism serves the deep state actors agenda, to keep you weak and divided, to an absolute T?

I have to ask, are you really seriously arguing that the Scandinavian countries are on the road to communism? Do you really believe the Scandinavian countries are going to give up their (equally-distributed) economic abundance and political freedom to adopt a system that was both a spectacular and a dismal failure almost 30 years ago? A system which failed to deliver to its citizens on any count, including economic, political and social needs and in addition had great income disparity.

I have not surrendered the principles of personal liberty at all. I am just not a fanatic about them. Each free speech and civil liberty issue is not equal – some are worth dying in a ditch for and some aren’t. I recognise that there is a line that cannot be crossed. I think that line is considerably to the left (or right?) of yours – that is all. I also think that mass compulsory vaccinations are a public health issue which justifies that line being crossed on the basis that without it many of us would be trying to insist on our freedom of choice from the grave.

For those of us who care about America, its people, its role in the world and its potential as a force for good then all those things you are describing are a source of absolute dismay. But I would argue that some of those problems have arisen precisely out of your values surrounding the cult of the individual and free choice.

My principles are hardly “knee jerk reactions”; they are long considered and established through research and analysis.

This term “cult of individualism” comes straight out of the Communitarian playbook of Amitai Etzioni. Communitarianism by the way, is simply, ‘Communism’with seven extra letters to fool the gullible.

The bottom line issue here is ‘voluntary’ verses ‘compulsory’. I have the unalienable right to chose. I claim that right among all the others of Liberty as inherent by my birth as a human being.I am not suggesting that you be forced to forego vaccinations. You are asserting the right of authority to force me and my kindred to, for the good of “the collective”.I insist that this is coercion and despotism. We don’t have to wait for all the perceived trappings of the USSR to acknowledge these things.\\][//

“Keep up the trashing of labor unions and of collective action to counter corporate control.”

I am asked on the other thread if I have never joined in projects with others, if I have never worked with a team. and then this quote above from Sam.

Yes I have worked with teams and groups for a common purpose. I worked in film industry for some 20+ years. I was a member of the ‘Sculptors Guild’ at that time as well. I have always supported unions, as I have always supported any voluntary associations for common goals.

These perversions of my positions are all made up in your own imaginations.

Yes, cooperation and common purposes are entirely legitimate. It is when coercion and force is brought into play that I object.

I hope this is clear, because as far as I’m concerned this issue has played itself out here.\\][//

I appreciate that you have read extensively on this issue and have obviously given it great thought. And I respect that you have done so.

All I am saying is that the terms ‘socialist’ and ‘socialism’ are very emotive in the American context and usually used to prevent any further discussion of social welfare safety net issues. That’s been my experience anyway.

I also appreciate that there are deep state actors and a whole lot more needs to be done to bring them under control somehow. I think they are more visible now in a way they weren’t in the past. So we are making some progress.

I appreciate you don’t want to be forced to do anything that’s against your principles. But to me it’s a matter of human life over ideology and, in the case of immunisations I think that is a choice worth making.

Can I ask though, if we were discussing ebola instead of vaccinations would that make any difference to you?

I’ve heard something along these lines from a lot of people, and I think it’s just a bit too simplistic to explain the vagaries of American history. There’s no doubt that bankers have a lot of power, but can you really draw a straight line from the “central bankers” of Jackson’s day to Wall Street today? If the same cabal of bankers has always ruled America, how do you explain the Civil War? I do think that Wilson’s presidency marked the arguable birth of the modern national security state, but I don’t think he was anyone’s “puppet.”

Peter Dale Scott remains one of the dominant voices on the JFK killing because his work is scholarly in the best sense. His forest is made clearer not only through his detail on the trees, but also by his use of what has not been reported and not investigated and not linked together in the overall fields of trees.

On the JFK case, he enlarged Salandria’s initial response of a coup by pointing us towards Ruby and the interlocking realms of electoral power and corruption, and expanded McCoy’s study of the CIA/drug connection to illustrate its octopus-like arms into that same interlocking realms.

The great compassion, observational skills and word phrasings, shown in his poetry, does not disappear in his writings on the deep state. One of the first to connect the dots of Dallas&Watergate& Iran-Contra. I am still absorbing his work on 9/11.

I think his work has deepened our understanding of political science, literature, and inter-cultural esthetics. Quite a career;quite a man.

Prof. Scott has provided us with a vocabulary to describe the interlocking organisms buried deep in our society. I hope he continues to expand the dictionary! Ike Eisenhower ventured there by naming the MIC – for reasons that have yet to be explained – but thanks to PD Scott we now have a developing lexicon to define the fullness of the phenomenon, and because we now have the ability to describe it we can no longer ignore it: The Deep State.

Donald, I spent two summers combing thru Casalaro’s files stored at the U of MO in Columbia; I believe he was gifted with intuition and a nose for news, but from what I saw he had not yet formulated a solid framework other than a nominal image on which to build. His contribution and his sacrifice I think were enormous and should not be underestimated any more than that of Gary Webb and numerous other mavericks. PD Scott on the other hand brings our understanding to an academic level. I don’t know that the professor would equate the Deep State with The Octopus … it seems to be a question of artistic imagery to me … but one might think of the deep blue sea where the octopus abides?

I think that is one of the reasons that he can put all these dots together, and still turn around and say that the system here is not “fascist”.

Fascism is just another term for the Corporatist State. There is nothing more clear, in my estimation than that the US is indeed a corporatist state. Scott describes a corporatist state in his commentary and then denies that is what it is.

As much as I appreciate Prof. Scott’s great detail and exposition, I find his ultimate conclusions baffling. This is why in the long run I point to Carroll Quigley and Antony Sutton as having a firmer grip on what all of this information means.

He mentions that quote of FDR speaking to Edward Mandell House. Well who was House? Philip Dru Administrator? Yes he played that part in the Wilson administration, the puppeteer and an agent of the Rothschild banking empire. Yet these puzzle pieces remain in the box lid, as Scott looks at the picture and wonders where the missing pieces are. They are there within his reach, but like his suppressed memory of the car that had been bombed he is in denial and doesn’t remember there are still pieces of that puzzle in the box next to his elbow.

Maybe he needs to write another poem before tackling his next book on politics.\\][//

Thanks for running this interview… At end of of there two hours + Prof. Scott vowed that this would be his last “political book” but he confessed that he’s already submitted an outline for his next one. He is the gold standard!

Accountability is the absolute crux of the JFK story. It matters less who killed Kennedy than how did democracy fail, and how can democracy be reinforced from now on.

What appears to protect the unnaccountable is ensuring there are sufficient numbers of citizens that sympathise with their position. I still have faith that when sufficient numbers of citizens oppose the agenda of unaccountable power then citizens can prevail. I’m sitting in a comfortable chair in a warm room. The ‘Deep State’ is not offending me sufficiently at the moment. The JFK killing MAY have been an event that at the time could have caused sufficient offense to create great change, IF the facts had been available.

For me the critical question is why must the phrase Deep State replace the older Military Industrial Congressional Complex of Ike’s initial draft.

Advocates of the former term might say the MICC is outdated and no longer reflects the complexity of the post 9/11 world.

I disagree. I think there is a historical continuity between the abject surrender of Checks and balances over intelligence and it’s Wall Street ties represented by the Coup of 1963, and later developments that are in more polite (and publishable) circles beginning to be called the Deep State.

The Deep State should be rejected precisely because it leaves the older, most critical history out. At least that is my opinion right now.

By the way I have a suggestion. Noam Chomsky, a writer I have become deeply suspicious of because of the horrible misinformation re 1961-63 with which he so very frequently crop dusts the “left,” has urged us to read the new book about the MICC called Double Government by Michael Glennon. Why not read THAT BOOK on the one hand, and on the other hand read the upcoming book by David Talbot, which takes Allen Dulles as a basis for analyzing “secret government” My bet is that Talbot’s book will prove much more relevant for any real “left” if we mean by that term opposition to total corporate control of the Once-Public-Sphere.

Let’s compare these two books. And let’s get thousands of others to do join us. It just might generate some democracy in the Twenty First century.

“Deep state” is just the literal English translation of Turkish “derin devlet”, where it refers to the Turkish military and the Kemalist establishment for whose benefit the Turkish army periodically conducted coups. (Erdogan seems to have broken the power of the Turkish deep state, at least for the time being.) The parallel to the more disguised American analogue seems pretty clear to me.

However it’s divorced from the earlier American history of the National Security State, especially between 1947-1963. That earlier evolution cannot just be dropped under some new, safer term that assassinated more sociology.

Why not use a term the points towards origins rather than obscures them?

I’m not sure the deep state is that deep anymore. It’s common knowledge lobbyists write our bills, money from big donors are the only thing politicians are interested in, and corporations have the rights but not the responsibilities of people.

Just as Robert Kennedy (with help from his older brother) sought to look at organized crime in America (something that J. Edgar Hoover denied), I think a rigorous academic examination needs to be done to look at the “deep state” as it exists. But unless someone is able to quantify and list specifics, I can’t accept lazy academic explanations. The best book I ever read on the links between CIA and the military for example was “The Secret Team” by Fletcher Prouty. I’d like to see that kind of writing done, and I’ve read Peter Dale Scott’s writings.

Well Sam, we agree on something here. I think Prouty is one of the very best sources on the JFK assassination as well.

I have dozens of hours of cassette tapes from Prouty interviews and speeches taken off of KPFK in Los Angeles in the 70’s and 80’s as well as his hard bound book, “JFK, which includes much of the ‘Secret Team’ material in a slightly different format than the PDF online.

Prouty’s long historical perspective, and his positioning within that period is without peer.\\][//

Prouty is good because he didn’t see things in pure black or pure white. Like Mark Lane, he saw the US government as a mix of competing factions, some good and some bad. CIA as an institution got out of control. Its creators (and extenders) integrated it into the military, into the media, into college campuses, and into our legislatures and corporations. I don’t claim to know how to break this octopus. I think the reason why mainstream America can’t or won’t cut to the chase with Kennedy’s assassination is because it has ties to this octopus. But just because this octopus exists doesn’t mean that everyone in our government is corrupt. It’s varying shades of gray. Americans need to grow up and stop looking at the world like it’s comic books. If we ever grow up as a culture we can begin to address the sh*t that exists as adults. We need to grow up.

I have read Mr. Scott’s works and they are excellent. Even if Mr. Morley, and I have his book and everything related to “What Jane Roman Said,” does not agree with everything Mr. Scott has written, I believe the fundamental flaw with this country is the way a FEW have dictated the way ALL of us our governed. I have read our constitution and I am pretty certain that the word lobbyist is NEVER mentioned. I am also sure that our constitution does not give us the power to overthrow governments that don’t agree or support the business policies of a few American companies. I could give you a long list, but for the sake of brevity, please look up what the CIA did in the case of the United Fruit Company, the overthrow of Chile, and Iran. That was done by a FEW for a FEW, and the consequences have been GRAVE for the many. If you read the history of the US in the 60 years, the same names keep popping up—Dulles, Bush, McCord, Helms, Phillips, etc. The only difference today is the names have changed—the policies have not. I, for one, would like to see Mr. Morley and his friends at the Post use their platform to help rid this country of the FEW to help the many who need to be heard. It is very hard for most of us to compete with the 898 million that the brothers from New York will spend in the 2016 election.

Another thing to consider on the constitutional question is the incorporation of The United States Of America by the Act of 1871.

In this act the Constitution for the United States became the corporate charter of the corporation titled, The Constitution Of The United States of America.

All of the text is the same in that document as in the original common law document. However the subtle change in this, is now the text is to be read as ‘statutory language’ rather than in the common law language of the original document. Statutory language is of course “legalese” and is thus termed “Legal Language”, whereas the original was “Lawful Language”.

In the Legal sphere every term is contestable, having legal precedents that are arguable in this arena. It therefore becomes a matter of “interpretation” in the legal definition of that term, to say what the words of the charter mean. “Legal Experts” must now ‘interpret’ that which is obvious in the common English language.

In this way the Constitution was taken out of the hands of the common people and placed into the hands of attorneys. It is they who have taken the Rights of the People, and changed them to ‘Privileges’ granted or withdrawn by authority by fiat of whatever Practical Politics of the day demands.\\][//

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